This is a journal entry I wrote in early Spring while I was studying abroad in London…
Berlin: a united city, 17 years old fresh off the cold war filled with shady hostels, pub crawls that include tour guides with backpacks supplying vodka shots on the way to each bar, a Neo-Nazi stalking my friend in a hostel, a hatred for the French, 1 Euro Cuba Libres, graffiti ridden stairwells, the junkiest red light district, a city fascinated by David Hasselhoff, BYOA (Bring your own Absynth) to restaurants, and just an enormous amount of history in just one century.
Think about a city where a 17 year-old boy grows up at the start of World War I. He goes to war for his country, loses, and post war means no money and super inflation in the 1920’s that reaches 1 trillion marks for just a loaf of bread. The man struggles to survive the tough times but a leader comes to power in 1933 who everyone believes to be a saint in rescuing Germany’s economy. Appeasement is given to Germany and Adolph Hitler begins to conquer Europe. Again you go to war and survive, only to be embarrassed by the loss and the atrocities your country has committed on the different races, especially the Jews. It’s now 1960 and the young, sophisticated intellectuals of East Berlin move across to West Berlin. By this time, almost 2 million East Berliners under a Communist regime move to West Berlin legally. The Russians and the Germans of East Germany decide to ask United States President John F. Kennedy for permission to block 
off entry into West Berlin and West Germany. JFK is on a yacht in the Atlantic Ocean living the high life with who knows, the British prime minister is on vacation during the August month, and nobody cares about anything. In one night, 40,000 German soldiers assemble the Berlin Wall (right) almost 130 miles long around West Berlin. The man now is aging and for the next 26 years, he has to bear the fact that he can not gain entry into the sectors occupied by the Allies after World War II and he is under communist control which means no chance for success or the pursuit of happiness. He lives a dismal life separated from friends and family, witnesses a Stasi secret police that executes at will, and believes the wall will never go down. He begins to take bets on if he will live to see the wall collapse. He bets against himself but on November 9, 1989, a loss of control over the citizens of East Berlin, a lack of communication between German leaders, and pounding questions by Tom Brokaw at a press conference about the wall leads to an uprising and the wall comes down as Gorbachev realized it was not promoting good will.
I met a girl at a bar who was 32 years old and lived through Cold War times. She escaped through Austria with a letter in her hand, just to get though to West Germany. This girl was only 32. This shows you how recent and real this history is. People tried scaling the Berlin Wall which was created in one night by 40,000 German soldiers and stretched over 130 miles suffocating West Berliners. East Berliners would try scaling the walls. If they passed the white line, then passed the 
first wall, crawled through the death zone or execution zone avoiding sniper fire, mines, dogs, etc., and then scaled the last wall, then they would make it to democracy, capitalism, and freedom from the oppression that was communism in East Berlin and East Germany. One guy zip lined from his office building into West Berlin over the wall, another guy was shot in the abdomen while scaling the last wall and the East Germans and Stasi (East Berlin Secret Police) left him there to die on the wall. Over 1,000 people died trying to cross and there are tons of crazy success stories as well. The Stasi Police were worse than the Gestapo with one agent per 16 East Berlin residents, spying on their every move. They would take a child out of school and show a picture of Big Bird. If the child recognized it, they would arrest the whole family for letting the child watch Western television like Sesame Street. They would interrogate people for hours and would collect their sweat in jars to keep on file their scent and then make the victim drink it. Hitler’s bunker was nothing special because nothing remains but a small patch of mud where Berliners bring their dogs to urinate and deficate on the spot where his body was burned. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews (left) was quite powerful with 1000 plus blocks of concrete that lined a square in which each block was the same width but different heights and resembled coffins. Architect Peter Eisenman and engineer Buro Happold were so genius that they designed it so that each person will have a different interpretation. I think it reminds me of a cemetery but instead when your walking through and some structures are rising above you, you sort of get lost for a few moments and don’t realize where you are, just like the Jews didn’t know where they were and what was happening. Although to get out you just have to walk left or right, the cobblestones make you lose your balance and sight of the “outside world” just as the Jews could not get to the outside world because of the entrapment. Ironically, the same company that sprayed the gray anti-graffiti paint on each stone to prevent vandalism or Nazism on the memorial blocks actually produced glycol or whatever chemical gas used for the gas chambers at the concentration camps. But every German company during that time had a part in the war, Seaman’s, etc. Checkpoint Charlie was amazing. This was the sight of the standoff between 
German and U.S. tanks at the split in Berlin. The Brandenburg Gate (right) was interesting as the first King of Prussia rolled through there, Napoleon, the Nazis, The Soviets, the citizens of Berlin during ‘89, and any dignitary. The statue of the female on top has a four horse chariot with an eagle that has a helmet. The head of the female statue is facing in disgust at the French embassy. Under the terms of the government when the Gate was built, nothing can be built nicer than the gate. So the U.S. embassy which is being built does not have any security zone because there is not enough space, the French embassy is hard to look at, the art museum is scaled down, the Hotel Aldon (where Michael Jackson dangled that child) is nice, but the Gate remains the symbol of Germany and the heart of history for Berlin. The Reichstag or Parliament was interesting and I learned that Hitler may have burned down the Reichstag in a conspiracy and accused a Communist sympathizer in order to gain the vote for right wing over left wing pre-1933.
Berlin has a history of only 17 years. It’s new, growing everyday, and at the heart of Europe and I was pretty surprised at what I came across. I had low expectations prior to the trip, but returned to London with a rich cultural experience of Berlin.
